Blogging is an excellent learning tool. Students can write to demonstrate learning or write for an authentic audience. Once again I recommend using www.weebly.com. You can signup for a free teacher account or purchase the Pro-version for as little as $30 a year. I purchased the pro-version so that my students would be able to load video or audio without using youtube. It just made life easier for several reasons: I could create more student accounts, students could upload video and audio directly to the page, and  larger files could be uploaded.

Get your students blogging as you embed the common core standards!

Checkout one of my student's blogs, "The Music Junkey"!

http://suzywells.wordpress.com this is a blog put together by an Elementary teacher. She has found it useful for her and hopes that others will find it useful as well. I found this useful for middle and high school as well. She has lots of great resources listed on the blog.

As educators we want students to have an authentic audience for their writing and speaking as we incorporate the new Common Core standards, podcasting is a great way to do just that! It is  simple when using www.weebly.com. As a teacher you can create a free site which will allow you to create about thirty accounts for your students to create their own webpage. I suggest getting them to create a blog page and to post their podcast. This will allow their audience to subscribe to their blog. There are other media's out there, but this one allows you as a teacher to monitor and control the content. I have tried podmatic and a few others, but weebly has been the best for me. Good luck in your endeavors to embed technology!

Check out my student's work at "The FLAME". 

http://www.livingroomcandidate.org/ this site has commercials from 1952 presidental elections to present day. It seems like a great resource for history teachers. :)

http://www.letterpop.com this one cost, but it may be something a school could use to improve communication with parents. It pushes content to twitter, facebook, flicker, and e-mail. My guess is that it is cheaper than bulk mailing. Looks like a tool for a multimedia class or a journalism class.

http://www.befunky.com looks like a great resource for students to use when creating original photos for projects. As a teacher you may want to preview the photos before letting students on the site.  I would also recommend creating a class account that students must use,so you can monitor their work.

ISTE has a page at http://www.techsoup.org/support/articles-and-how-tos/finding-and-using-images-from-the-web that explains copyright issues on images found on the internet. Great site to use in educating students as they begin to create and collaborate.